While libraries, theatres and art galleries close across the region, one North-East town has just refurbished its library, plans to reopen a long-closed theatre and its art centre has secured a funding increase. Chris Webber reports.

FLOODED with light, surrounded by colour, with the gentle hum of conversation from the swish cafe upstairs, Stockton Central Library has the feel of an exclusive London bookshop.

There’s the ultra trendy comfy chairs, the computers, the fun-looking children’s corner and the specially designed teen space.

It’s all a long way from the gloomy bookcases and the slightly disapproving staff I remember from my own library-going youth.

And, much more importantly, a council actually investing £1.9m into a single library is a very long way from the picture elsewhere.

Across the country, 600 libraries out of about 3,000 could close. Darlington, for example, is much more typical of the national gloom: it has announced the closure of the well-used Cockerton branch library along with the wellestablished Arts Centre.

Yet in the Stockton area cultural life has received some huge boosts in the past two years.

Thornaby library reopened after a major refurbishment in 2009 and Billingham Forum Leisure Centre opened its doors after an £18.5m revamp in June. Next year, the long closed Globe Theatre, which once hosted The Beatles, will also reopen after a £4m restoration.

Much of this good news is down to luck. The council secured grants for the Forum and the Globe before the economic downturn. It would almost certainly not be successful now.

But that’s not the whole story. More impressive is the how the borough has managed to improve visitor numbers to its cultural institutions, even without big money investment.

Last year, there was a 15 per cent increase in visitors using the 12 libraries in Stockton – a big achievement considering the number of books borrowed from libraries nationally has halved since 1991.

The increase in Stockton adds up to 900,000 visits a year and about one million books and other items issued.

Organising community events and reaching out to schools have helped to justify investment in a service which is actually growing. It meant the authority could hold its library budget at £2.8m during the last two years, unlike nearly every other authority.

The principle of improving visitor figures before applying for cash has also helped at the The Arc, the art centre in the town centre. The venue used innovative marketing techniques, identifying what individual customers like and targeting them with personalised emails. It impressed the Arts Council enough to increase The Arc’s grant by 27 per cent at a time when hundreds of other venues across Britain were told there was no more money at all.

Libraries, however, don’t receive grants in the same way, but every council must provide a library service by law. So the commitment to invest in Stockton Central Library meant making hard choices.

The solution was to close four council offices across the town and move them into the central library. It means the council will end up saving money but also that residents can pay their council tax, pay their rent, receive their housing benefit and a myriad of other council services at the library. Some of them even stop and browse the books.

It’s too early for official visitor figures, but the word is they have more than doubled to more than 1,500 per day.

Mark Freeman, the libraries and heritage manager at Stockton council and chairman of the North-East branch of the Society of Chief Librarians, stresses that Stockton has the same budget pressures as everywhere else.

“We’ll have a big increase in visitor numbers in the first year and then they’ll settle down a bit,” he says. “But they’ll still be higher. Why?

Because the place looks different. There’s no high shelves so it lets in more air, it’s designed so there’s more space and there’s a really nice cafe, like you get in a good bookshop. It’s the kind of place a young family would like to come on a Saturday.”

BUT rather like bookshops, libraries are locked in a gentle decline. Mark admits: “There will eventually be fewer libraries.

One issue is people buying electronic books. We offer a service but it’s not compatible with the Amazon Kindle. Publishers think people will download a book through a library and just steal it – yet it’s the way a lot of people are going to be reading in the future.

“But there is most certainly a future for libraries.

They are still very popular. The most popular service provided by the council in Stockton is bin collection, the same as everywhere else. The second is libraries.”

Penny Slee worked at Stockton Central Library on the first day it opened, in 1960, and she was there when it reopened in 2011.

“The library would always be buzzing on a Saturday, full of young families, and I loved it,”

she says. “That died away over the years but I was so happy when I saw those families coming back. The place is alive again.”

Wandering around the library while Penny chats to an elderly book lover, I’m impressed by those fancy chairs, but also the banks of computers, the lift, the art gallery area, the cafe selling proper cappuccinos at £1.50, and I think it’s a place I’d bring my own young family on a weekend.

As I leave, a little girl runs up to her mum, who’s clearly helping out on the school trip.

“Mam, mam, can we come back, pleeease!” Her mum smiles. Another lifelong reader is born.